> Sadly, I don't think there is a way to tell CVS "I want this in the
> tree, but I don't ever want you to change it".

I went looking for just such a feature, but couldn't find it; I thought
maybe somebody else might know something I didn't. Oh well.

> If the file in question really is a sample, maybe you should call it
> predefines.mk.sample (say) and then make CVS ignore the real
> predefines.mk. Or am I missing something?

The predefines.mk has to exist (though it shouldn't have anything in
it) because the -include directive apparently doesn't work on some systems
(QNX, Slackware 7) and thus the lack of a predefines.mk file causes the
build to choke.